Anthony Peraica/target
Wackos on the ballot : harvested on Oct 31, 2008 from http://www.politicsmagazine.com/magazine-issues/november-2008/wackos-on-the-ballot/ When Anthony Peraica, the Republican Commissioner of Cook County, Ill., called me late one afternoon to discuss his state’s attorney bid, he told me to hang on as soon as I picked up and before even identifying himself. It was difficult to make out exactly what was happening on the other end, but I could hear the mystery caller shuffling around and speaking to somebody on another line about making an appearance at some sort of event. “Alright, I’ve got a parade in the morning, so I’ll probably stop by in the afternoon,” he said unenthusiastically. I’d contacted Peraica’s law office earlier that day to hear his version of a couple of odd stories that surround his 2006 campaign for president of the county commission, and to get his take on a mutually cantankerous relationship with one of his fellow commissioners. On election night 2006, Peraica was watching the returns from his room in the Intercontinental Hotel when he grew increasingly suspicious that election officials were trying to rig the election. With Peraica trailing his opponent, the vote counting was put on hold for a few hours due to a technical glitch with the voting machines that prevented several precincts from transmitting their vote tallies. Outraged, and sensing a nefarious scheme, Peraica rounded up his supporters, who were congregated downstairs at the victory party along with the press, and marched through the streets with the angry mob toward the elections office. At one point, the crowd, which was described by several local bloggers as resembling the torch-wielding villagers in the final scene of Frankenstein, reportedly took a wrong turn, causing a few moments of disorientation before regaining its bearings and arriving at the elections office. Flanked by his lawyers, Peraica demanded entry so he and his advisers could monitor the ballot count. And after some bad noise between law enforcement and the Peraica people, he was allowed in. After days of reviewing the ballots, however, it was clear there was no wrongdoing, and Peraica had indeed been defeated. And while he insists the media accounts of the entire misadventure were exaggerated to make him look bad, he did acknowledge that “it was one of the craziest things” he’d ever witnessed. “As you probably know, the press here can be bought, and they’ve got an axe to grind,” Peraica informed me. “So the press long ago stopped being unbiased in Cook County, or, as I like to say, ‘Crook’ County.” Peraica also believes that his passion is often misinterpreted for radical behavior, and that his abrasive approach to electoral justice is rooted in his upbringing. “I’m very passionate about campaigning and democracy, and as somebody who grew up in communist , I know what communists and Socialists are all about,” he says. That fervor has spawned some testy relationships not only with the press, but with colleagues as well. But none have become more vicious and savage than the intense rivalry between Peraica and fellow commissioner Elizabeth Gorman. Two summers ago Gorman called the police after what she described as an escalating series of threatening and obscene phone calls from a former Peraica campaign worker who had allegedly developed a habit of contacting her office, sometimes early in the morning and sometimes drunk, depending upon his mood. According to Gorman, the caller, Fred Ichniowski, would make hostile demands of her staff whenever Peraica and Gorman were butting heads on some political matter, insisting that Gorman support Peraica’s positions. Ichniowski, who has said that he made the calls without outside encouragement, and who Peraica says was not affiliated with the campaign at the time, had faced charges of harassing phone calls in the past. Moreover, he first met Peraica when he retained the services of the lawyer’s firm in a case that involved Ichniowski allegedly slashing several nuns’ tires. Afterwards, Peraica took him on board to help with the campaign, although he says Ichniowski quickly became more trouble than he was worth, requesting money for transportation and other things that the campaign couldn’t afford. As I spoke to Peraica about the incident, his litigation instincts kicked in, and he defended his former client. The defense mostly centered on the assertion that Gorman had come forward with the complaints just to derail his campaign. But Peraica also tried to dismiss the seriousness of the tire-slashing incident by questioning the legitimacy of the nuns. “This was a petty crime that he was accused of, and by the way, these weren’t nuns that were sanctioned by any type of church or organized religion,” he said. “They just wore these fancy nun-like costumes.” In truth, they were Carmelite nuns — but in Peraica’s world, you can’t trust anybody.